You know, a place where you put your positive energy in motion and get whatever you want. If you really, really want a professional soccer stadium, and can't wait long enough for a true public vetting of the matter, including where the money will come from, just dream it. And throw that "vision" word around a lot.

In announcing his plan to move the Real Salt Lake to Sandy and build a monster venue to house it, team owner Dave Checketts called Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan a "visionary" for his work on bringing principal players together to forge the deal. Sandy Republican and House Speaker Greg Curtis had "vision," too, and you know what? He was in on the deal, too. Senate President John Valentine and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. were also part of the vision thing. Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, too, though Checketts noted that Corroon, the lone Democrat on the dais, "got into this as the bus left the station a little bit."

The 22-acre project is supposed to be finished in summer 2007. And to think, it all started with a parking garage.

Careful readers will recall that after some backroom arm twisting, the 2005 Legislature authorized $20 million to Salt Lake County for a badly needed covered parking structure at the booming South Towne Exposition Center. Lawmakers earmarked the money for that purpose. It's called legislative intent. Of special interest is Salt Lake City's $8 million contribution to that expense, since the capital city was, until only recently, the place where Checketts had emphatically said he would keep his team.

But Dolan, Curtis and other key Republicans - flying well below the public radar - have since changed the game. They propose to take the $20 million, build a significantly cheaper parking structure across the street and get land for the stadium, too. They're spinning it as a real savings for the taxpayers. No problem, apparently, that they skirted legislative intent with that money and got a handful of change from Salt Lake - nearly half of the expenditure - to do so.

Just politics? Smart business? Yes. But smart and sneaky isn't always prudent. Once the high of this big announcement wears off - once we all have to drift back to living in this dimension - there are implications to this kind of public policy. If the Legislature lets Sandy get away with this, it's setting a precedent for violating its intent. Today, it's parking terrace money for a soccer stadium. Tomorrow, whatever suits a suburban mayor's fancy.

This is just one unsettling aspect about this project. Another is the fact that since Tuesday, when word of the Sandy deal leaked, Checketts had already tweaked the $60 million estimate upward. "North of sixty to sixty-five million," he told reporters.

Checketts vowed "this will not increase the tax burden on the people of the state of Utah." But he won't reveal his private funding sources, and simply asks us to take his dream on faith.

Huntsman told me he couldn't speak to the possible violation of legislative intent. "I wasn't around when the Legislature discussed its intent" for the money, he said.

Valentine said there was no issue of Sandy skirting the state's intent. "This is in keeping with the spirit of the legislation," he said. "We're getting about what we bargained for."

The politicos who scrambled behind the scenes are OK with that. Valentine assured me that should the project fail - adding that it won't of course - "market forces will take over and find another use for it."

Comforting. And now I'm due back in my own body.

hmullen@sltrib.com